WOMEN, LOVE AND MARBIAGE 297
period 'in which anger will be the only quality that has a manly appearance; anger at the fact that all the arts and sciences are flooded and swamped by an outrageous dilettantism—that philosophy is talked to death by brain-racking
chatter__that politics are more fantastic and partisan than
ever before—that society is in complete disintegration, because the champions of the old ways have become ridiculous even to themselves, and endeavour so far as possible to stand outside the conventions. For if women's greatest power once lay in the conventions, how would they ever manage to regain a similar amount of power, after the conventions have been abandoned ? "
Accordingly my brother felt it his duty to issue a warning. "It is just because I have a higher and deeper and even more scientific conception of woman than her male and female emancipators that I oppose the emancipation movement. I know bettor where their strength lies, and say of them ' they know not what they do/ Their very instincts are at war with their present aspirations ! " Such is the point of view from which we must regard all the anti-feminist romarka in his writings. It is consistent with this standpoint that in practice he was, of all the men I have ever met, tho most chivalrous and considerate towards women ; not only towards young and pretty girls and the intellectual and famous among older women, but also towards uninteresting old spinsters and rough women of the people, who certainly did not belong to the ornamental portion of their sex, and through their ugliness, uncouthneHs and banality failed to inspire courtesy in other men. 1 am not speaking only my personal experience, but on the testimony of others, as for instance his fellow-boarders on the Kiviera. Stories are still told of his politeness towards women to whom no one else showed any kindness. His tenderness towards invalid women can best be soon from the evidence of those concerned. That pious, distinguished, invalid English woman whom my brother often met in Sils-Maria gave me a touching account of